


Valentine's Day

by wreathed



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Ficlet, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Office, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-21
Updated: 2010-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:09:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Valentine's day is shit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Valentine's Day

The sparse office is deserted; the crisis of the week wound down a whole hour and a half ago. But Ollie and Glenn, possibly as a punishment for something they’ve done in a previous life, have been told to stay the fuck put until Jamie gets back to them about SKM Enviros’s verdict on the carbon offsetting of the whole bloody project. Like _that_ fucking matters.

Of course Ollie, little shit that he is, isn’t content to just sit tight and finger-fuck his iPhone until the Caledonian Mafia stop rogering each other for long enough to roger base. Ollie has to pass the time with _conversation_.

“What’s...the worst Valentine’s day you’ve ever had?” he asks, pushing a hand through his hair and looking bored as hell.

“Oh for fuck’s sake...”

“I mean, I know you’re the Victor Meldrew of the gang, but you must have been in glorious sonnet-inducing unrequited love once.”

“I can’t even...most Valentine’s days I can’t even remember, Ollie. I don’t know they’re days of Saint Valentine. Mostly because I’m not a swooning teenage girl.”

“One of my girlfriends stood me up on Valentine’s day,” Ollie says. Glenn doesn’t dish out any sympathy.

“You expecting anything this year, then?” he says instead. “Message from your grandmother? Text from Angela Heaney sent to your number in error? One hundred red roses and a giant fucking heart-shaped balloon from Dan Miller?”

“Ha bloody ha. Christ, it’s not been that long since Emma chucked me! I haven’t had that long to, you know, get back in the game. And you’re one to talk, I know for a fact you haven’t had any for years. Go on, Glenn. Your worst fourteenth of February.”

“If you must know, you meddling, pissing toerag,” – and Ollie cracks up at Glenn’s less-than-dynamic swearing – “the fourteenth of February was the day my wife filed for divorce.”

Ollie sobers. His eyes dart around the room. “Fuck. Mate. Well, er, at least you remember that day, yeah? I mean, it’d be a bit worrying if you didn’t remember that.”

Glenn glares at him.

Silence follows. (Blissful. Brief.)

“Valentine’s day is shit.”

“Yeah,” Glenn concedes. “Shall we just go home? Tucker and MacDonald have probably fallen asleep post-shag and forgotten to call.”1

Ollie gives a mirthless laugh. “Don’t really fancy having Malcolm’s attack dog on my case. Better stick around. Want to see whether that bottle of gin’s still in the bottom drawer of Nicola’s desk?”

And so in the small hours of the fourteenth of February two thousand and ten, Ollie and Glenn drink enough of Nicola’s not-so-secret alcohol cabinet to think that sending an Interflora bouquet to Malcolm Tucker under the name of Lord Julius Nicholson of Arnage is a good idea. It’s not the worst Valentine’s Day either of them has ever had.

 

1 Malcolm and Jamie are under the impression they are the exception to the rule that there are only open secrets in Whitehall. Unfortunately, this isn't the case.


End file.
